


Epilogue

by ELISE_ELEVEN



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya is a lone wolf, Bittersweet Ending, Epilogue, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Married Couple, One Shot, POV Sansa Stark, Post-Battle, Post-Canon, Queen in the North, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, Soulmates, Winterfell, bran is creepy as usual, game of thrones season 8, my perfect ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 14:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18813040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELISE_ELEVEN/pseuds/ELISE_ELEVEN
Summary: Beneath the trees, sits a woman with hair just as red at that of her silent companions. Clothed in dark firs and thick blue material of her own making, Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North, finds solace in the quiet of the forest. The trees of her ancestors watch over her as she keeps watch, as she always has, over the castle of Winterfell in the distance.“You know, I still feel like an outsider coming here, even after all this time.”





	Epilogue

Bright red leaves quiver in the wind as the winds of spring sweep through the Godswood. Winter has come and gone, but the white trees with their cloaks of red and ever solemn faces, have never once wavered. 

Beneath the trees, sits a woman with hair just as red at that of her silent companions. Clothed in dark firs and thick blue material of her own making, Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North, finds solace in the quiet of the forest. The trees of her ancestors watch over her as she keeps watch, as she always has, over the castle of Winterfell in the distance. 

This is the place where her ancestors began worshiping the old gods, this is the place where Arya Stark brought an end to the Long Night; and it is also the place where, so many years ago, her parents had one of their very last conversations before Lord Stark left for King’s Landing and changed their lives forever.

Sansa finds her thoughts often drifting to her father and mother; when she’s alone or when she worries about being a good Lady and Warden, and weather she would make them proud. She thinks maybe they would be. There’s no way to know how they would have felt about the things she did to get where she is, to bring peace to Westeros, the things she sometimes debates to herself in the dead of night; and secretly she’s glad they weren’t there to see it. Thinking back, she is nothing like her parents, Littlefinger and Cersei made sure of that, and it makes her wonder what she would have been like if they have never left Winterfell to begin with, if Ned had listened when Catelyn begged him not to go. 

A shuffling in the grass behind her pulls her out of her thoughts and alerts her to the fact that she’s no longer alone in the wood, but Sansa isn’t alarmed; she knows those footsteps.

“You know, I still feel like an outsider coming here, even after all this time.”

Sansa doesn’t bother to turn around, only smiles to herself. “You’re the Lord of Winterfell, and you’re the father of three Northern children. You’re not an outsider.”   
The footfalls move in closer behind her until there is the firm press of a hand on her shoulder. 

“I can’t shake the feeling this is a place Lannisters are not welcome.”

Sansa leans back into the touch, resting her head against the solid body behind her. “This is your home now. You’re part Stark. It may not run in your blood, but it is in your heart.” 

With a soft grunt of effort, he climbs over the log to sit beside her. He takes her hand and kisses it. “My wife, the poet.” Sansa meets Tyrion’s smiling eyes and can’t keep the grin off her own lips. It feels good to smile and to laugh, and her husband has become quite the expert on making her do both over the years. 

“I didn’t see you at breakfast. You were gone before I woke up. Is everything alright?” 

Sansa’s eyes fall to the small scroll of parchment in her hand. With a sigh, she unrolls it for him to see. “It’s from the King. We have been summoned.” 

“Is it really that time already?” 

She watches as Tyrion’s eyes roam the paper before returning to her own. He gives a knowing half-smile. “Well I suppose it would be bad manners to refuse the King. Although I wish we could miss the whole affair entirely. I have no great longing to ever set foot in that city ever again.” 

Sansa nods. “I don’t want to go either. Bad things happen when people of the North visit the capitol. I don’t want to take them to that place… I don’t want them to see… to know…”

Downcast eyes survey the clearing before them, wise and creased by a thousand smiles, as Tyrion contemplates the idea of what they will be confronting if they return. 

They haven’t been back to King’s Landing since the day of the coronation and that final battle, where the ghosts of all the unspeakable things that did that day, lie in wait. They have been hiding far away in the cold of the North for so long. Isn’t it the most foolish thing they can do, to revisit the old demons that have haunted their families for so long?

Tyrion turns towards her and takes both of her hands in his. “Sansa, they can’t hurt us anymore. Circe is no more. The Mountain, Euron Greyjoy, the Golden Company; they’re all gone. We have no one to fear any longer. I hate that place as much as you do, but I believe this is something we need to do. No one will touch our children. We’ll be there to make sure of that.”

Sansa nods, “You’re right, I suppose. It’s time to face it. And, I not like we really have a choice. He is the King.” 

“I mean, as much as I love the north…it will be good to finally get some sun.” 

He casts Sansa a myscevious glance and snorts, shaking her head and bumping him with her shoulder. 

“There are a few things I like about the North, and it being bloody cold is not one of them.”

“A few?” She casts him a side eye. 

“Well, a couple.”

Sansa shakes her head. 

“Maybe just one.” Tyrion bumps her back, and though she rolls her eyes, she’s already laughing. 

Their heads fall together, brows pressing against each other. When Sansa meets his eyes, she’s no longer laughing. “Are you sure we’re making the right decision?”

“No. I don’t.” His brow knits together and his eyes are full of concern. “I don’t know. But I know, we will do it together, whatever it may be.” 

Sansa has only to lean in the slightest bit to find his mouth with her own. Her eyes fall closed as she leans into the kiss. Nothing reassures her more than this strong, fierce warmth, these lips she’s come to know so well. She doesn’t even to need to look at him, to know they have both made up their minds. 

They pull away a moment later and share a smile. Tyrion pushes a few strands of cinnamon locks out of her face be, caressing her jaw with a thumb, before rising from the log. 

“I suppose I’ll go begin preparations for our journey. Are you coming?”

“No. I think I’ll stay out here for a bit longer.” 

He leaves her with a soft kiss to the temple and makes his way homeward. 

The red-haired Stark girl sits a few moments longer among the wise old trees. Her gaze falls to the clearing before her, where her the members of her family and dearest friends who died in the war, were buried after the crypts were destroyed. They had decided the Starks would rest easiest in the open air of the forest. And there was no longer any need to fear the dead. 

...

Sansa climbs up into the front seat of the wagon and turns to see Bran being wheeled up to the little company of wagons and riders, busy in preparation for the long trip south. Bran’s eyes remain blank as his attendants help him out of the chair and into the seat of the small wagon beside the lead one. He must sense Sansa looking at him, because as soon as the attendants have left, he turns his estranged gaze on her.   
“So, it is time then.”

“It is.” Sansa smiles at her brother. 

Over the years, what was left of Brandon Stark and been fading even further into the recesses of the mind that is now occupied by the Three-eyed Raven. Sansa makes an effort to smile, to talk with him as if all was normal, even though he doesn’t seem to care either way. She tries, but it’s difficult to hide the loss that comes with the slow death of a loved one. 

At that moment, Tyrion emerges through the stone archways of the gates of Winterfell, and marches towards them. 

“I think she’s starting to like me.” He casts a glance over his shoulder and grins. 

She cocks an eyebrow and snorts. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Well, at least Bran likes me. Don’t you Bran?” With some effort, Tyrion climbs into the wagon beside Sansa and glances over at the young man. 

Bran doesn’t even bother to turn his head, “Yes of course. What’s not to like?” He replies in a monotone voice. 

“There we go”, he turns to Sansa with a smug expression. “Bran, articulate as usual.”

“Do we have to go to the Capitol? I don’t want to!” A small voice pops up from behind them. 

Tyrion turns in his seat to look into the back of the wagon, at the young girl with a great curly hop of red hair, sitting with her two siblings in the back. “Because, the King said we have to. And we do what he says; that’s what makes him a king.

“But you said we shouldn’t go there because there are evil people, and the that’s where the King keeps his monsters.” 

Tyrion quickly tries to redirect the conversation when he sees the look Sansa is giving him. “I don’t remember saying anything about monsters, evil people, yes, but monsters…no I would never say anything like that.”

“Yes you did! You said the King keeps the monsters chained up during the day and lets them lose at night. I don’t want to go to go there!” 

“You must be thinking of some other devilishly-handsome, cleaver-beyond all reason, dwarf. I would never deliberately try to scare my children.” 

“Father!” The girl puts her hands on her hips and scowls, looking very much like her father in that moment.

Sighing, Tyrion places a heavy hand on her curly head and peers down lovingly into her eyes. “There’s no reason why you should be afraid of going to King’s Landing. Nothing is going to hurt you, not as long as I’m around.”

“But, Father, why?”

“Because, my dear, as Warden of the North, it is your Mother’s job to go when the King calls, and, as her family, it is our job to support her.” He pauses to give a small smirk. “That, and the King has monsters.”

“Ha! I knew it!” 

Chuckling under her breath, Sansa meets the eyes of her middle son, a red-head as well, but with his father’s eyes. They exchange a look and he shakes his head as his mother rolls her eyes at the antics of happening beside them. 

Their youngest son crawls under the seat to climb into his mother’s lap. He’s only three years of age, with soft blonde hair, and looks that would put any Lannister to shame. Sansa gathers him into her arms and presses her nose into his soft hair, breathing in the familiar sent of her child. He squirms but she holds him tightly. 

With a jolt, the procession begins to move forward, and towards the Capitol. Sansa turns her head to cast one last glance at the Castle, and in the highest tower, the outline of a figure in the window catches her attention. Arya and her wolves will guard the North while Sansa’s gone. A Stark remaining at Winterfell, as it always must be.

“Mother, why do we have to go?”

Sansa looks down at the little one on her lap. She considers, for a moment, what it would be like if he really knew all of the reasons they have to do this. But when he gazes up at her with those eyes, blue as a winter sky, and more innocent than she thought possible; she knows she must shield him from their past, so dark and full of terrors, as long as she can. 

“That’s a story for another time. All you need to know is that the King has called us all together for a celebration. And it’s going to a very good time.” 

She can’t tell him this is the ten-year anniversary of the final Battle of the Iron Throne, a battle that both she and his father had a major role in. She can’t tell him it has been ten years since the violent deaths of the cruel Queen Cersei and her brother Jamie, his aunt and uncle, and the death of their child together. It has been ten years since Jon-or Aegon Targaryen was crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms, and they still haven’t told him that this man is his uncle, and also his second cousin. She can’t tell her son about how he came to reside upon that throne of swords, by taking his own sword to cut down the woman who had been his lover and also his aunt; the woman who had turned King’s Landing to ash and decorated the streets with charred corpses. And this child must not know that his parents had the opportunity to prevent these events from happening, but did not. 

It will be a difficult conversation to have, but one they’ll save for the future, when they’re even farther away from those times and their memories have dimed. 

“No one does a feast like the people of Kings Landing”, Tyrion reassures the boy, “They have the best boar in the Seven Kingdoms.” He glances up at Sansa and they exchange a knowing look. Then he ruffles the hair of his youngest child. “And the best treats and desserts.”

Their daughter pokes her head up between her parents. “It is a very long journey?” 

“Yes. It’s very long, so don’t get too excited about the sweets yet.”

“But what are we going to do all that time? I’m already bored.”

“Would could sing some songs”, Tyrion speaks up. “There’s a song my good old friend Pod used to sing…”

The wheels bump along the narrow, rocky roads, carrying the family and their company southward to the clear, but gruff voice. 

“High in the halls of the Kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts; the ones she had lost and the ones she had found and the ones who had loved her the most. The ones who’d been gone for so very long, she couldn’t remember their names. They spun her around on the damp old stones, spun away all her sorry and pain. And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave. Never wanted to leave. Never wanted to leave…”


End file.
